Page 357 of Halfblood Deceived

She sighed, making a show of crossing her arms and tapping her foot against the floor. “I don’t have time to indulge you. I have shit to do. Park your arse somewhere so I can examine you.”

“That’s what you came here for?” he asked, eyes steady on hers in that way that made most people squirm.

“Yes,” she lied blithely. Yes, fey can lie. Fuck knows why humans think otherwise.

“Right,” he drawled, letting go of the door and going to sit at the foot of his bed. He arched a brow at her.

Mari went inside the room, locking the door behind her.

“Why the need for privacy, Mari?” Andreas asked, tracking every step she took closer to him as if he were a lion about to pounce on a rabbit.

Mari wondered if he knew he had looked at her as if he wanted to devour her for a while now. Maybe not. Or maybe not until recently. “Since when don’t you like privacy, Andreas?”

She lifted a hand to cast a reading spell and realized she was shaking. This is fucking humiliating, for fuck’s sake. She swallowed as inconspicuously as she could and cast. Green magic created a hologram of Andreas’ insides. A breath she’d been completely aware of holding escaped her.

Despite the sturdy armor, that fucking gargoyle had cut through his collarbone. Without Mari’s hasty shield, Zeydan’s sword running through that gargoyle’s body, and Diana cutting the bastard’s arm, Andreas would have been sliced open. Broken beyond repair. Without Kamilla’s blood—the strongest vampire blood aside from the King’s—and Aylana’s help, Mari would have watched Andreas die from blood loss and poisoning. She owed them all for saving him.

“You are almost completely regenerated,” she said. “There will be permanent scarring, however.”

“Oh, no,” he drawled. “The horror—”

“Because you’re not properly feeding,” Mari continued over him. “You need to feed from a host to return to full strength.”

She expected a sneer and a fast dismissal, as usual.

Instead, he gave her an unreadable look and said nothing.

Mari blinked. “I’m saying you need to feed from someone—”

“I heard you,” he answered at last.

She shrugged. “I had to make sure your two brain cells had delivered the message correctly.”

He arched a brow. “Are you done? Are you returning to your duties, Doctor Mari? Or do you need something else from me?” There was something horribly knowing in those brown eyes.

Oh, fuck. He knows. He fucking knows what I’ll say. Is he planning to reject me, mock me, or accept my offer?

“You need something from me,” Mari affirmed, keeping her voice steady and her mild scowl affixed to her face through sheer stubbornness. “You need a host to heal, and I can be your host.”

“Like you were for Zeydan,” he said, tone forcefully flat.

“Yes,” Mari answered.

She saw it in his eyes then—the urge to say something petty and cruel he wouldn’t really mean. She knew he could pretend to be a heartless bastard all he liked, but he wasn’t one in his core. But he could fake it so well. And part of her wanted him to. If he did, she could slap him and tell him something twice as cruel and end this giant mistake before it happened.

Andreas licked his plump lips and swallowed hard.

Ugh. No male has any right to have such a mouth.

He leaned his weight on his hands, his brown eyes never leaving hers. “If you want my fangs in your pretty little neck, come here.”

Mari stopped breathing.

She had what she wanted. She couldn’t believe it.

Mentally shaking herself, she recovered her facade of nonchalance and breathed again. Perhaps too fast, but she couldn’t control it.

He gave her a lazy but assessing once over. “So?”

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